Nine Poems by Marianne Morris

COMPANY EDITIONS is an independent publisher of poetry and visual art. The journal, Company, was founded in 2013 and is published three or four times per year. We will also be publishing chapbooks beginning in late 2016. Company Editions is based in Athens, GA, Iowa City, IA, and Cambridge, MA. You can contact the editors by emailing editors@companyeditions.com.

MARIANNE MORRIS

The following poems are from WHO NOT TO SPEAK TO, 2007-9.

VISA DELIGHTED AT FREEDOM TO ADAPT

The ghostlike apparition of the outlook email alert

catches the sleeve of your eye as it drifts away.

CONGRATULATIONS! You are already dead.

And if already dead, CCTV merely prevents

the bombers from doing their job. Nothing

prevents me from doing my job.

When the tube slows I wish for a bomb

not just the threat of one and the lies,

at last to be spared the

necessity of wage labour, just

one day broken out into light.

But disasters never come

when you’re ready for them, ‘we have a

passenger unconscious on the train in front,

we are hoping they will be removed shortly.’

PSYCHO FOLKLORE SERIOUSLY

Ravishment, the character of a
hotel.

The trauma waits for you

frantic not to miss out

on mint choc chip.

In
the shop the wrappers tug,

shining eyes and language boost,

twirl, ecstasy.What pours itself

to our demands attention, now just
look here.

Coming alive, a munchkin army,

rip into you

meat
you, hands covered in hair, neat

blue suits, cajoling eyes, benign to
buy it buy it

is all after all the colour of belief.

It
can be difficult.Which ones

are out to get you, which

ones aren’t?You might be fooled into thinking

that some of them aren’t out to get
you but

they all are, all the little
hairy-handed ones.

Ravishment, a magazine with a free
gift of lithium.

Absolutely genuine hundred percent
quality love,

it’s not just you who has the crazy
idea maybe

something looks back from inside of
you, some

inanimate object buried before with
past hurt, a

plastic dog, a tablecloth full of
invisible glass shards,

a plastic dog again with a free gift
of tongue caress.

A
limit of calm destroyed by your

inability to remain inert, the
munchkin drags you

by the hand into the biscuit aisle,
kicking up the floor you can’t

keep your pants up, the mystical
presence of money in you is

all that you are.The bag?It’s at the hotel.Maybe

maybe just leave it at the hotel.

POLITICAL EROTICA

A prejudice exposed

only burrows deeper into itself.It is a hedgehog

prejudice, cute as a remote.The kernel of

the hedgehog prejudice is not hatred, it burrows

deeper still and past

all that, deeper still into the
conviction

that there is such a thing as ‘the

right thing’, you can make

love or you can talk it out

you choose to make love

reeling the baked frisbee past

all tenderness into the repeatable

moment of possession, jettison

of white pearls clotted in the
throat

of meat.Places you don’t want to go

to: Kandahar sorry Kandahar

THE REVOLUTION IS MY BOYFRIEND

Oops,
shit.Culture moves faster than

you
antiquate yourself down the blender

of
darkness eyes puffy and slitted against

the
owl you bought, a series of bones

jutting out, starvation I would

always
move in this way, she said stuffing

lace
petticoats into the case on the road

to
Prada.But not to delve

too deeply into any one thing

not
unless I bought it, unless I brought it up.

Move faster than you, play

tame,
autocue the dead.I just put an

entire

bird
in my mouth, gross.

News item.

Bush
shit on by bird, perhaps swallow (they

are
mean fuckers and will fight), this is the

visible
and this is what glistens beneath –

we
are inert underground, avoiding a walk

to
the you can’t say it – zero sum values in

a
kind of game.I told you

all
this as you laid there

in
the past, naked for the most

part,
lying about the girls

skipping through with their

arms practically broken,

hoping you’d be able

to
look at the high metal toys and we could agree

on
a price together, giving up things left, right and

center-left.

NIGHTLY TORRENTS THREATEN TO DROWN SHEEP THAT CAN'T RUN

It is a day when the afternoon is

cold (pretending summer) and Mighty

Teas lie like lingerie in a basket of

food before us.For Heaven’s sake.

Our rent agreement is more

radioactive than sex.

This
event has been scheduled: a

leap
into the past second-hand

anecdote.They say you are dragging

her
down with you, your daughter

who
danced in fountains in the 90s.

That was the

problem
though none of it was

real.A fee turns the pedals

that
turn the earth and everyone

on
it, not one of them counted by vote.

_Your
name_: what’s your name?

Do
you feel cushioned by accumulations,

by
the forethought required by accumulations,

do
you feel defined by purchase?Is
it

purchase
that shapes you, breathlessly

in
between sex and philosophy and

the
accumulating bank statements.

I hate to break

this
to you but in real politics there

are
cups of tea and the right things

are
said and they are polite and want

to
wear nice clothes and are nice and they

walk
down these plush runways.It is a

surprise
to find you here.This is not

really
your kind of thing.Perhaps you
would

be
so kind as to go back to your own ontology.

YOUR GENERATION NEEDS A WAR

The
wipers go across the screen, changing

the
various spheres of influence inhaled

through
the window the ice, air, dark eyes

gloomy
and incompatible with Strangeness,

which
you need to get acquainted with, again

and again the notion of

control bears wings

of
metal, stuttering cages of thing and wire

that
rise with social effort.The
blind lines

glistening,
pig-like, schweinlich
– and certain of cheques

as
even the number eludes them.Walk
through the

bazaar,
bizarre compartments of contrary elements,

boxed
jobs reserved for the technologies of the self

on
the shelf.

Try different breeds, and strands.

The
fronds lift and close the shadows in and

pieces
close in on you, like a mouth blacked out,

its
teeth wet with Sisyphus and peroxide,

addled
hearts and broken time

as
the evening draws out staying put

as
chaos breaks around its cloud or wave,

perdurable
to withstand even £24.99.

PIERRE REVERDY'S ART MODERNE RETOUCHÉ

So
they haven’t replaced all the parts in our heads

It’s
still the same old mechanism

I
was late figuring this out, meanwhile they’ve all been

Practicing
authentic newness with such skill

It’s
called Modernism

But
how are you supposed to discover a

New
way of believing when everything is gone

The
Eiffel Tower, this haystack,

Loses
itself in distance

Like
a needle in the gray clouds

You
return

All
the walls fade in the night wind

All
the monuments

Are
off

You’ve
come at a bad time

The
words are blue and glitter on the air

But
they die on the page

No
one collects fragments of sunshine lost in the dust

The
strongest one walks alone around his conquests

You
will cut the heads off for him

Even
when he doesn’t say thank you

Even
when his dreamy eyes deceive the world

Life
draws itself out for him like a wave

And
quietly takes its share of here

Runs
through the airfield with its big mouth open

And
crazy eyes

Guided
by the sun

Light
breaks on a din of cries

He
would go alone to the depth of day, to punch the canvas

But
he’s too fat

When
his spirit rises, his head hangs low

Hurt
by the turn

And
the unrivaled ending

Taken
by a spider

This
firefly

Night
is a star

OBAMA IS COMING ON THE RIGHT DAY

because
the sky is full of helicopters

furious
lambs droning not high

enough
above Taksim Square

surging
upwards I confuse a flood of

black
and white paper

for
birds

mosques
poke up like the rockets

they
negotiated in the Dorchester

old
man carries a basket of bread on his head

young
man looks like a Hoxton replica

at
5am our local imam finds his heart

knowing
only the devout are listening

whereas,
in the afternoon, he is quite dejected

misses
notes, is brief

HOME ZONE

Maybe
she wanted me to deal with her

And
called up the doctor to come after me with a pin

That
pricked the lung, so its crystal balloon slipped out

Full
of words, the ones drawn in cartoons

Each
mouth said the things it always said

Each
head moved back and forth, the same

The
page number did not change either

I
had the sudden thought of an old maid

Until
she spilled the thing I needed

The
one plug holding the water in

Uncomfortable
streams

In
them standing a crippled woman

Up
to her ankles in mud she took off her

Cape
and threw it into the mud and danced

Never
acknowledge pain, least of all your own

A
city will be good

A
city’s signs will subjugate the rest

Of
the signs, you’ll see

Once
I’ve written it out properly

I’ll
give it to you then

Marianne Morris started Bad Press in 2003, after submitting a poem containing the word ‘cunt’ to an editor who responded that he didn’t like her ‘syntax’. Her first full collection, The On All Said Things Moratorium, was published in 2013 by Enitharmon Press. She holds a PhD in performance writing from University College Falmouth in the UK, and is currently studying Chinese medicine in California. Recent chapbooks include DSK (Tipped Press, 2013), Iran Documents (Trafficker, 2012), and Commitment (Critical Documents, 2011).